Hey everyone. I’m still traveling around Europe, mostly without internet access. Still, I’d like to ask anyone who reads this website to go to my friend’s submission at “Threadless.com”:http://www.threadless.com/submission/120749/Avian_Flew and vote for it. If you didn’t know, Threadless is a t-shirt site that prints and sells more artsy t-shirts that are über-popular. I’m in Germany now so the keyboard actually has an “ü” button! Threadless tees have been featured everywhere, most famously on Zach Braff in “Scrubs”:http://imdb.com/title/tt0285403/.

Ever wondered about the right way to wear rings that depict faces? I’ve been wearing an old family ring my Dad gave me for years and people constantly asked me why I wore my ring upside-down. After arguing with everyone about it, I finally broke down and asked the experts at the “Emily Post Institute”:http://www.emilypost.com/. Here is my e-mail, and their response:

??…I have an old family ring that I’ve been wearing for years that depicts the face and head (in profile) of a Roman Centurion. Should the Centurion’s helmet (the top of the picture) be closer to the base of my finger, or the fingertip?…??

??…Usually, a pictorial ring is worn with the base facing the wearer, not the “observer.” Therefore, the centurion’s helmet is closest to the fingertip…??

I guess this is what they mean:

For more information about men’s fashion and style, my favorite writer is GQ’s “Style Guy”:http://men.style.com/gq/fashion/styleguy. He may be an elitist, but he does have a caustic style that’s fun to read.

Outdoor company “Patagonia”:http://www.patagonia.com has always been good at being environmentally responsible, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this. The DIY shoe is really just a $30 bag of scraps with instructions on how to turn them into something that sort of looks like a shoe.

Science fiction counts on certain facts, one of those is wearable technology. Clothes that change color to match the wearer’s surroundings, external health monitors à la Starship Troopers, and even full body computers like the ones sported by gargoyles in Snow Crash. All of these presume that we can in fact wear technology. Well, today we mortals are one step closer to that reality as scientists at the University of Illinois have invented a fabric made up of 500 micron wide chain-mail links capable of transmitting electrical signals across its surface. Brilliant!

Is it the indie/retro cred that makes owning LPs so cool? Because I don”t get it. For years I”ve been baffled at how otherwise-normal people can go ga-ga for old records. I”ve literally been in the presence of someone telling a story of how her grandfather had just died and in the telling, happened to mention that he had left a crate of old records. After the story ended another acquaintance of mine actually asked what the woman”s family was planning to do with the records. That”s how much people seem to care, and what”s the reason? I understand that a freshly-pressed LP would in theory have better audio quality than a CD or mp3, but for how long can that last? Surely not more than 5 diamond-needle dragging plays.